


Moving On

by Riona



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Game, Psychological Trauma, Recklessness, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-10 05:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11121123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: "Sometimes, after a traumatic experience—""I said I'm fine."Sam and Mike do not have the healthiest coping strategies.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's entirely possible I've written too many post- _Until Dawn_ fics about these traumatised teenagers. I can't stop.

Sam stares out of the window of the helicopter, at the burning lodge, although she’s not really taking it in. It takes her a while to realise someone’s talking to her.

“What was that?” she asks, looking up.

“The distress call came from an Emily,” the man says. “Was that you?”

So Emily _did_ manage to find help, at some point between setting off with Matt and showing up in that thing’s larder. If Sam weren’t too wiped out to make logical connections, she’d have realised that already; it’s not like a rescue helicopter suddenly appeared by coincidence. Emily probably saved her life.

She should feel grateful. She guesses she’ll start feeling grateful when she starts feeling her life is something worth saving. Right now, with her life expectancy suddenly extended from hours to decades, she doesn’t really know what she’s supposed to do with all that time. Not after this.

Mike is here. Mike is alive, sitting next to her and gripping her hand; he hasn’t let go of her since they got out of the lodge. That’s something to be grateful for.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m not Emily,” she says.

“Do you know where we might find her?”

“She’s dead,” Sam says. The words seem to clog her throat. Somehow, even after she saw the bodies in the mines, their deaths weren’t real until this moment, saying it aloud. “Everyone’s dead.”

Mike shifts closer to her.

-

She’s invited to join what feels like a thousand different Facebook memorial groups. She refuses them all, and then she unfriends everyone from the mountain, so she doesn’t have to see the messages everyone is leaving on their walls.

A day later, after the fourteenth message of concern from family members or people she vaguely knew at school, she deletes her Facebook.

She avoids the news. She spends as much time as possible concentrating on her studies. She steps up her climbing sessions. Two times a week. Three. Every weeknight. Every night.

She asks if she can climb without the safety harness. They won’t let her.

The climbing instructors are starting to worry about her, she’s pretty sure. God, everyone’s always worrying about her. She’s _fine_.

She starts heading down to an old rock quarry sometimes. Somewhere she can climb and clear her head without all the stupid safety equipment getting in the way.

Mike sends a few texts. Tries to call.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need him. She can manage on her own.

-

_Sam,_ the message reads. _This is Mike’s father. Mike has been missing for two days. We’re very concerned. Has he been in contact with you?_

She’s hitting the ‘call’ button almost before she’s finished reading, a thousand horrible possibilities flashing through her mind. Did he go back to the fucking mountain? But he obviously left his phone behind, if his dad is texting her from it. Did a wendigo get him? Maybe the two of them never really escaped; maybe those things have been tracking them ever since they got off the mountain. Maybe—

It’s Mike’s voice that answers. “Oh, hey, Sam.”

For a moment, Sam is speechless with outrage. “Did you just make me think you were dead?”

“Missing,” Mike says. “Not the same thing.”

“Why the _hell_ —”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Mike says. “It just didn’t seem like I was getting you to talk to me any other way.”

“You know, after everything we went through together, I actually forgot for a moment that you were an asshole.”

She should hang up right now. She shouldn’t let his stupid ploy to trick her into a conversation actually _succeed_. It’s just...

God, it’s good to hear his voice.

Mike clears his throat. “Anyway, you want to tell me how much of an asshole I am in person?”

“You’re not subtle, you know,” Sam says.

“I don’t care. I want to see you. I just...” He sighs. “With everything the news is saying, I’m starting to wonder if I’m remembering it right.”

She’s been staying away from the news; it’s just been non-stop coverage of the Blackwood Incident, and she doesn’t need that. Incidents in the news are meant to be things that happen to _other_ people. She hates the journalists constantly pestering her for an interview, the candid photographs of her on the front pages of newspapers, the headlines about the ‘brave and beautiful Blackwood survivor’.

At one point she caught sight of the headline ‘Survivor Sam: did she murder her friends?’ in a store. She actually preferred it to the ‘brave and beautiful’ ones; it felt more true. Chris and Ash could have stayed in the safe room; they might have survived until dawn. But no. She dragged everyone out after Mike, and she kept pressing on ahead, couldn’t even wait to make sure the others were keeping up with her. She didn’t even realise they were dead until she saw their bodies in the lair.

“What’s the news saying?” she asks.

“Blaming it all on the flamethrower guy,” Mike says.

Chris would hate that; he took the guy’s death hard, kept blaming himself for it. But it doesn’t matter what Chris would hate, because Chris isn’t here.

“I don’t know about you,” Mike says, “but I remember monsters.”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t want to talk about this. “You’re remembering right.”

Mike lets out a long, shuddering breath on the other end of the phone. “Okay. Good. I mean, not _good_ , just... I needed to hear someone say that.”

There’s a long silence. It’s not awkward, exactly, but it presses in around them, and something is lurking in it.

“Are we alive?” Mike asks, quietly.

“I don’t know,” Sam says.

-

She agrees to meet up. She’s not sure about it, but... it’s for him. It’s not for her. She’s coping fine, she doesn’t need other people. But he does, and she guesses she can be there for him.

When she opens the door to him, they just stare at each other for a moment. He’s back to being clean, tidy Mike. He looks like a different person. For a moment, she’s half-convinced that everything on the mountain was a dream.

And then she looks down at his hand, the missing fingers there.

“Can I, uh, touch you?” he asks.

She doesn’t know what he means. She nods anyway.

He touches her shoulder, tentatively. Lets out a breath. Slides his hand up to rest against the side of her neck.

“You’re real,” he says.

She’s not sure she feels real. But his hand is warm, and she leans into it a little. “I guess so.”

A moment passes. He takes his hand away, wipes it against his jeans, suddenly awkward. “Uh, sorry. I wasn’t trying to...”

“It’s okay,” she says.

-

She tells him she’s planning to go climbing, because she’s always planning to go climbing, and he offers to drive her there. She thinks about going to the climbing centre, pretending she always does this properly, safely, with equipment and supervision.

She gives him directions to the quarry instead.

They’re stuck in traffic to begin with, but when they’re clear of it he starts driving too fast. Way too fast. She thinks about saying something.

She doesn’t mention it. It’s nice, the wind whipping through the open window, the scenery flashing by outside.

And then Mike _slams_ on the brakes and she nearly hits the dashboard, the seatbelt catching her hard enough to wind her.

A car just pulled out in front of them. They almost hit it. Sam can feel the thunder of her own heart in every part of her.

They sit there for a long moment, stopped in the middle of the road.

“Christ,” Mike says. He rubs his hand over his face. “Christ, I’m sorry, I was going too fast, wasn’t I?”

“Just a little.”

“Shit,” he mutters. “I shouldn’t have risked it. Not with you in the car.”

“It was good,” she says. And right now, with her heartbeat spiking, with the two of them breathing hard in this enclosed space, with the image in her head of twisted metal and wailing sirens, it’s better. “It’s the adrenaline, right?”

Mike sighs. “I don’t feel real without it.”

The cars behind them are starting to honk. Mike pulls over to the side of the road and switches off the engine.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again. “I think I need a moment.”

“Sorry?” she asks.

“Your climbing,” he says.

She’d forgotten they were actually going somewhere. In her head, they were just driving to _drive_ , for the speed and the risk of it.

She’s still trembling.

Mike closes his eyes and tips his head back and lets out a long groan. It stirs something inside her. “God. I could have killed you.”

“Do you do this often?” she asks.

“Put my friends in danger?” He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at her; just stares blankly through the windshield. “You already know the answer to that.”

“Drive,” she says.

“Like this?” He turns to look at her at last. Hesitates. “Sometimes.”

For a few seconds, there’s silence between them.

“I’ll stop if you ask me to,” he says.

“Take me with you,” she says.

He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. I can’t risk you.”

The pounding of her blood is easing, and she can’t stand the thought of not feeling it again. She can’t stand the thought that Mike might drive off and get himself killed without her.

“Then take me _somewhere_ ,” she says.

Mike frowns. Studies her face for a few seconds. “You’re not asking me to take you to a restaurant, are you?”

“Just... away,” she says. “Everyone knows who I am. Everyone thinks they know what happened. I can’t take it.”

“Are you serious?” Mike asks.

But he’s thinking about it. She can see it in his face. They were speaking without words by the end of that night, and that connection hasn’t frayed. They’re bound together; he’s a trap she’s been caught in, or maybe it’s the other way around. It was stupid of her to think she could cut ties.

Mike shakes his head. “It’s international news. Where would we go?”

They’re going to end up back at the mountain, Sam thinks. They’re still up there. They never really escaped.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Somewhere.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really thought this was just going to be a weird, dark oneshot! Apparently it's a weird, dark twoshot instead.

He asks for a few days to think it over. She doesn’t want to give them to him; the longer he has to think about it, the more likely it is that he’ll make the sensible decision. But she guesses she can’t force it.

She’ll run away on her own, if she has to. She doesn’t _need_ him. It’d just... be good to have him around. For company. Maybe just so it won’t only be her own life she’s ruining.

Four days later, he calls her up. All he says is, “I’m outside.”

Her things are already packed and sitting by the door.

She heaves her bags into his trunk and gets into the passenger seat. For a moment he doesn’t speak, doesn’t even turn to look at her.

“You know this is a terrible idea, right?” he asks.

She nods. “I know.”

“Okay. So long as we’re both on the same page.” He starts up the engine. “Let’s do it.”

-

They haven’t escaped the whispers completely. But it’s easier, on the road. If someone looks at them like they seem familiar, they can just move on.

Sam buys presents for her friends at some of their stops. It’s stupid; their finances are limited, obviously, and her friends are dead. But sometimes she’ll see something that she thinks Jess would like, or Chris, or Hannah, and she’ll usually end up buying it. She doesn’t know why.

-

They haven’t really discussed where they’re going. But they’ve been heading north.

“You know,” Mike says, over breakfast in a Seattle diner, “if we keep going the same way, we’re going to hit the border.”

He’s trying too hard to sound casual. Sam wonders how long ago he realised what was happening. She doesn’t think he was consciously aiming for Blackwood at the start.

Maybe they’ll be recognised as the runaway Blackwood survivors at the border; maybe they’ll be stopped and returned to their families. Some part of Sam is hoping for it.

“Let’s keep going,” she says.

It’s not really about what they want. Of course they’re heading back up there. They don’t have a choice.

-

There’s not much to be salvaged from the burned-out lodge, but the cabin is still intact. Or mostly intact; the front door’s window is broken. Sam sees Mike’s expression and decides not to ask about it.

They’re not planning to stay up here long. A night, maybe two. Just long enough to assure themselves that they can survive, that they’ve _beaten_ this place, and then maybe they can leave it behind at last.

(They won’t ever leave it behind. She knows that he knows it as well.)

They may not be planning to stay long, but they’ve brought as much food as they could carry. They know what happens to people who go hungry up here.

Sam swings her backpack onto the floor and looks around. “Can we get some heating in here?” The broken window won’t help – broken _windows_ ; there’s more than one, and Mike doesn’t look willing to explain the second one either – but maybe they’ll be able to cover it up with something.

“Uh, the power wasn’t working when I was here with – I mean, last time I was here,” Mike says. “I don’t know if fixing it’s been a big priority for anyone since then.”

There’s a pause.

“We could leave,” he suggests, a little hopefully.

“I’m not stopping you,” Sam says.

Mike sighs. “I’ll make a fire.”

They shouldn’t have any trouble getting it going, at least. It turns out you get strange looks if you buy up a store’s entire supply of disposable lighters. They decided to get the flammable aerosol cans elsewhere, to make it at least _slightly_ less likely they were about to get arrested.

-

“Guess we should get some sleep,” Mike says at last. “You know, before it gets dark.”

“Guess so,” Sam agrees.

There’s only one bed in the cabin, although at least it’s a large one. She can tell he’s about to offer to sleep on the couch, or to stay up and keep watch. She stops him with a look.

So they don’t talk about it. They’ve gotten pretty good at not talking about things.

She doesn’t really feel like she’s slept by the time the alarm on her phone goes off, but she vaguely remembers dreaming, so she must have slept at least a little. The light is starting to fade outside; she can see it through the sheet pinned over the broken window.

She doesn’t want to get up. The bed is warm, and Mike is warm, and the air on her face is so cold. But she doesn’t have a choice.

“We should get ready,” she mumbles, pressing her face against his back.

Mike groans. “Your nose is freezing.”

“Mike. They’ll find us if we don’t find them.”

“Okay, okay.” He sits up in the bed. “Let’s go hunting.”

-

It’s crossed her mind that maybe there aren’t any wendigos left, for now, until the roaming spirits claim their next victim. Maybe they all burned in the lodge.

It’s strange, the ache of disappointment in her chest at the thought. They can’t have come back here for nothing.

“Do you think there’s something that attracts them?” she asks.

Mike shrugs. “We just need to... move around and look tasty, I guess.”

“What were you and Jess doing when it showed up?”

Mike doesn’t answer for a moment. There’s no sound but their breath freezing in the air, the crunch of snow under their feet, the cries of birds from the woods nearby. She thinks they’re birds. They’re probably birds.

“Jess was shouting,” he says. “I think it heard her.”

-

They hole up in the barn. It seems safer than trying to hunt out in the open; the wendigos can’t come at them from all angles, there are entrances they can defend. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the wendigos will take the bait. Sam might not be able to fight on her own terms.

If they don’t come to her, she’ll go to them. It’s a bigger risk, maybe, but if she didn’t want risk she wouldn’t have come here. What does she have to lose?

(Mike. As long as Mike is alive, she has a weakness. She hates it.)

She stands in the barn’s doorway and shouts out into the emptiness until her throat is sore. Just wordless yelling at first, and then somewhere along the way she starts calling the names of her dead friends. Jess and Matt and Emily. Josh. Hannah. Beth. Ashley and Chris, and Mike, Mike, Mike—

“Hey.” Someone is grabbing her hands, pulling her back inside the barn, and it’s Mike, and for a moment she thinks everyone has come back, everyone else is alive as well. “Hey. Sam? You know I’m still here, right?”

She’s crying, she realises. She swipes the tears away with the back of her hand, furious.

“If anything’s around, I think it’s probably heard you,” Mike says. His hands are on her arms, his eyes on the doorway. “We’d better be ready.”

There’s a shriek in the distance. It isn’t a bird.

-

The flamethrower guy’s journal said you shouldn’t kill a wendigo. That he’d been capturing them instead. That _killing_ a wendigo would release its spirit, and that spirit would possess anyone who found themselves starving on the mountain, push them into cannibalism.

It’s a solid argument. But Sam doesn’t know how you’d begin to capture one of these things.

(She’d asked Mike if he had any ideas, back at the cabin. “Bear traps,” he’d said, with a wince.)

She flicks on the lighter. Readies the spray can in her hand. Stands very, very still, watching for the first appearance of unnaturally long fingers around the doorframe.

Watches.

Watches.

Acts.

The wendigo screams as the flames engulf it, and a part of Sam whispers that it used to be human, and the rest of her is screaming in triumph. She can fight back. She can _kill_ these things. She doesn’t have to be terrified.

The can’s run dry by the time she prises her finger off the spray button, even though the wendigo was probably already dead halfway through. Her legs are shaking like she’s run three miles.

She takes a step back and wraps her arms across her stomach and bursts into laughter, breathless and fierce. When at last she turns away from the smouldering corpse, she sees Mike watching her in admiration, or maybe fear.

-

They don’t leave the mountain after two nights. They go on supply runs, obviously, but most of the time they stay up there. In the daytime, they sleep in the cabin’s one bed, tucked close for warmth. At night, they hunt.

There’s no access to television or the Internet here, no news of the outside world. Sam’s universe has narrowed to ice and fire and monsters and Mike. She knows what she’s doing; she knows who she is. It’s all she needs.

-

It’s probably not a surprise that they’ve screwed up. The flamethrower guy had obviously been doing this a lot longer than they have, and even then, with all his experience and equipment, he was killed in an instant.

The mines are an intricate network honeycombing the mountain, running just below the surface. They’re buried too shallowly; it’s too easy to break through into them. Too easy, if someone knocks you out of a wendigo’s path, to land so heavily that the ground collapses under both of you.

They’ve been trying for hours to shift the debris that crashed down around them, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that they’re trapped here, in one small section of the mines.

Mike is thinking about Hannah, she knows. Thinking that he deserves this, that Sam doesn’t. A small, selfish part of her is thinking it herself.

-

Time goes by. Days go by, judging by the rise and fall of the light levels. They keep trying to clear a path; Sam makes a few efforts to climb the walls, see if it’s possible to get to the patch of sky where they fell through. It can’t be done.

Her attempts at climbing have left her with scrapes and bruises all over her body, but by this point, huddled against the rock wall with Mike, she’s barely aware of them. She’s so hungry. She’s so hungry. Her stomach has claws, and it’s tearing up the rest of her.

She has to look away from Mike.

She’s so hungry. It’s an effort to think of anything else. And he’s here and so close, still warm, and he smells so good, and...

They haven’t been talking about it.

They’re going to have to.

“Are you starting to feel it?” she asks.

He breathes out, slowly and shakily. “Fuck.”

There’s a brief silence.

“I’m not gonna do it,” he says.

“Hannah did,” she reminds him. “You can’t say she wouldn’t have fought it. The spirit might just be stronger than we are.”

Mike shakes his head. It’s as cold here as it is everywhere else, but she can see the thin sheen of sweat on his temple. “Hannah was different. Beth was... she was already dead.”

“And the miners?”

A pause. “I don’t know.” Another pause. “I’m still not going to do it.”

“Well, I’ll try not to,” she says. “I just... don’t know if I can have your confidence. I don’t know if it’ll let me stay in control.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “I’ll be honest: I’m not wild about the idea of getting eaten. But I’ll take it over the other way around.”

“So you’re not the one who has to deal with being a wendigo?” she asks. She’s not sure whether she’s just teasing.

“I can’t kill you.”

“You might have to,” she says. “I want you to stop me if I come at you.”

Mike shakes his head. “That’s fucked up. Don’t ask me to do that.”

“That miner wendigo,” Sam says. “You said it was, what, eighty years old? How long am I going to be trapped down here if I turn into one of those things?”

“Pretty sure they can climb up walls,” Mike says. “You’d be able to get out.”

“Oh, well, in _that_ case it’s fine.”

It’s not that funny, but Mike starts to laugh anyway, and that sets her off. Quiet, unsteady this-situation-is-so-fucked laughter.

God, she’s so hungry.

If a wendigo could get out of here, it’ll be able to get in. Maybe one of those things is going to find them, rip both their heads off. Maybe that’s the best they can dream of.

They were probably always going to die here.

She thinks about telling him she’s glad she’s not alone.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she says, quietly.

He slips his hand into hers. “I know.”

_It’s okay_ might be too much to hope for. At least he’s still by her side.


End file.
